What Does Living Green Look Like?

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By this point, we all know we need to do something about climate change, but will switching lightbulbs or hauling groceries
in a hemp sack really stop the Arctic meltdown? Sure, the Prius is kind of sexy, at least when Cameron Diaz drives it, but hey, the family SUV is paid off, and that big gas-guzzler feels safe. Lowering the thermostat makes sense — you cut heating bills and trim your carbon footprint. But just one long plane trip more than cancels out the carbon savings you achieved by freezing all winter.

There are so many scientific complexities, so many confusing personal choices, so many ways to rationalize doing nothing. Yet doing nothing isn't really an option anymore. Not after Al Gore scared us half to death. Not after those 70-plus-degree readings in New York City in January 2007, one of the warmest years on record. Not after Hurricane Katrina or the heat wave in Europe that killed 35,000 people. In a recent national survey of more than 1,000 people, 60 percent rated themselves as "extremely" or "highly" concerned about global warming and its implications for the future, which is a researcher's way of capturing that knot-in-the-gut sense that something weird is happening and that gnawing fear that we're handing our kids or their kids an environmental mess. The survey, by MindClick, a market research firm in Los Angeles, found that women, in particular, are looking for ways to adopt earth-friendly habits.

These three women wrestled with the same questions and found answers. They began with simple steps — switching to energy-saving compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs), toting reusable shopping bags, recycling — but they soon went down paths they never imagined. Each woman's journey was different, but they all discovered this: You don't have to be a purist to make important, even inspiring, lifestyle changes. And going green can have surprisingly sweet rewards.

"Three years ago, I wouldn't have thought I'd be doing any of this."

Laura Caton, 44, sales consultant; Sandwich, MA

Laura Caton has replaced every bulb in her home with CFLs. She sets the winter thermostat between 58 and 65 degrees when the kids are out — and she's keeping the air conditioner off this summer. A few years ago, she couldn't explain the difference between Earth Day and Arbor Day; this past April, she organized an Earth Day program for her son Colin's fourth grade. "Three years ago, I wouldn't have thought I'd be doing any of this," Laura says.

In fact, it was 9-year-old Colin who got her going. In third grade, he learned about global warming, started thinking about the environment, and suddenly noticed litter. One day, while walking to a store with Laura, then a stay-at-home mom, he saw teenagers strut past a garbage can and blithely drop food wrappers on the sidewalk. Outraged, he ranted to his mom.

"I said, 'You know, we can write a letter to the editor,'" Laura recalls. Laura frequently fires off letters to papers like the Cape Cod Times — three letters just on the subject of dog poop on the beach. So Colin wrote, urging people to take care of the planet — and he received a note of congratulations from his state representative.

He was thrilled, and determined to speak out more. Last summer, Laura helped him start a website, ecosavvykid.com, to teach children how to go green. "No matter what your age," Colin says, "you can make a difference." The site offers games, interviews with green businesspeople, even 11 ways to reuse "those pesky plastic bags." (Number one — perhaps not so surprising — "dog poop bags.")

Laura backed the project wholeheartedly, though not out of any environmental convictions of her own. "I didn't have a job at the time," she says. "I was bored. And quite honestly, I got a charge at how excited Colin was."

Once the site was launched, Laura told her son, "If we're going to talk the talk, we have to walk the walk." But how? she wondered. The Catons — there's also husband Chris, 48, and daughter Jamie, 7 — live in a 3,500-square-foot house on a golf course. Colin pushed Laura to get a hybrid car, but she refused to part with her SUV, a Nissan Pathfinder. "It's paid for," she says. "I'm going to drive it until it's in the ground." Chris flies at least once a month on business, and the family visits Laura's parents in California once a year. No matter what other eco-savvy steps the family takes, "our carbon footprint stinks," Laura says.

But after a friend mentioned "incremental greening," Laura stopped agonizing about what she couldn't do and focused instead on what she could. "You don't have to have solar panels on the roof to make a difference," Laura says. "You don't have to be a total earthy-crunchy person to make a difference. You have to make an effort — that's the key."

Laura began washing all the family's laundry in cold water. The Catons switched to an electric company that uses more renewable sources, even though it cost $25 more a month. Laura harped on everyone to turn out lights, use both sides of the computer paper, and drink tap instead of bottled water. (The kids went along readily, but Chris balked at refilling the plastic water bottle she gave him.) The family set up a recycling center in the garage. It has buckets for plastic, paper, glass, and metal, plus "the bonus bin" for 5-cent redeemable bottles. Their community doesn't offer curbside pickup, so Chris hauls the stuff to the dump, five miles away.

If Colin's website once gave Laura a way to fill her time, it has now become a way to fulfill her life. The two get invitations to speak to children around the Cape. "If the kids get educated, they tell their parents," she says. "The kids get it — they care about the environment. They really get you thinking about what's going on and what's really important."

GREEN PAYS OFF

These small changes save the Catons money and energy:

Buy perishable groceries only as needed: It saves $50 a week and eliminates wast-ing produce and dairy products.

Recycle cans, bottles, and paper: This cuts the family's contribution to landfill by 66 percent.

Switch to CFLs, unplug computers, and turn out lights when leaving the room: That reduces electricity usage by one third.

"I pictured Mount Kilimanjaro with no snow on it, and that really bothered me."

Sarah Kasprzak Lachance always loved the outdoors. She grew up in Maine, then moved to Colorado and worked nights in a restaurant so she could spend days skiing, biking, and rock climbing. She did her bit for the earth, of course — recycling is almost a religion among young wilderness types in the Rockies. But when her first child, Sawyer, was born in March 2001, Sarah felt an urgency to do more. She'd cradle him and think of the fun she'd had and the wonder she'd felt racing down white-powdered mountains, snorkeling in coral reefs, and backpacking in lush forests. Near tears, she'd imagine all of it wiped out by the havoc caused by climate change.

"I wanted him to have all these magical experiences I'd had," Sarah says. "I had this sense of everything changing — the skiing season was getting shorter. I was picturing Mount Kilimanjaro with no snow on it, and that really bothered me. I just kept wondering, What's going to happen? Why do we allow a rapid change in the earth's environment to occur when we're the ones causing it?"

So the former special education teacher sat down at her computer to figure out what she could do to help. It was five years before Al Gore made global warming a chic cause and a household concern. Sarah found lots of information, but the problem seemed so massive she felt paralyzed, and the extreme green suggestions overwhelmed her: Give up your car. Become a vegetarian. Get off the power grid. "I had a newborn," she recalls. "If I showered and brushed my teeth twice a day, I thought I'd accomplished something."

Then she came across an encouraging statistic: By one estimate, if every household replaced five standard bulbs with CFLs, enough energy would be saved in a year to shut down 21 power plants. Lightbulbs — she could manage that. "I realized that there's a lot of power in small changes," Sarah says. "And there are a lot of people like me, trying to get by day to day but wanting to get involved."

From her home, between baby feedings, with no funding and no background in science, Sarah started her website, campaignearth.org, to give people hope, not anxiety, and inspire them to make simple doable-yet-meaningful lifestyle changes. "No doom and gloom," she promised on her website. "When was the last time depression got you really motivated?"

The heart of her program is the Monthly Challenge — one eco-friendly practice to adopt for 30 days. Sarah carefully chose activities that, she says, "the average Joe can relate to." Reduce junk mail by canceling catalog subscriptions. Shop at a farmers' market or buy directly from local farmers. Ride the bus. And, yes, use CFLs. "The idea is that by the end of the month, each activity will become habit," Sarah says. "After all, who would ask to be put back on junk-mail lists?"

Sarah launched the challenge in 2002, brimming with excitement. The first month she got only 53 sign-ups. "I was so disappointed," Sarah recalls. She gained about 30 more for each of the next 18 months. Meanwhile, she and her husband, Paul, 41, had another son, so now Sarah felt doubly motivated. "I thought about giving up," she says. "But I'd look at my children's faces and, well, I really believed in the mission."

Eventually, people started emailing her to say they'd introduced the Monthly Challenge at their church or school. As awareness about climate change grew — and as Sarah got Campaign Earth sponsored nonprofit advertising on Google — sign-ups swelled. Campaign Earth, which Sarah still runs from home with no funding beyond donations, now has more than 4,500 challenge participants.

Sarah, Paul, Sawyer, 7, and Hunter, 5, now live in a fishing village in Maine in an 1852 colonial. They follow most of the challenges Sarah outlines on her site — though there's not much bus service in town — and Sarah keeps pushing to make the household even greener. Paul, a software developer, is extremely supportive of her efforts but watches their budget when it comes to big-ticket ideas. They agreed to wait almost a year before buying a Prius because he didn't think they could handle the squeeze of new car payments. And when she pressed to spend about $1,000 on attic insulation, he agreed only after calculating that it would pay for itself in two or three winters by lowering heating bills. They installed cellulose, which is made up of more than 85 percent recycled paper fiber. Sarah's now working on Paul to say yes to wall insulation and rooftop solar panels.

She has also worked relentlessly on her dad, one of the biggest condo developers in southern Maine. He wasn't naturally interested in the green cause: As he saw it, "environmentalist" meant "tree hugger." But Sarah bombarded him with information about climate change, green construction, and — perhaps most convincingly — the cost savings of energy-efficient buildings. Slowly he came around, first installing CFLs in his new condos, then moving on to energy-efficient appliances, superefficient windows, and cellulose insulation. Now he's one of the greenest builders in the state, and his newest developments have received the federal government's Energy Star certification. "I'm really excited and really proud," Sarah says.

Sarah hasn't yet talked with her sons about long-term climate change. "I don't want to scare them," she says. They'll learn soon enough, and before they do, she wants them to understand what's at stake and appreciate the magic of the natural world. Before they learned to read or write, Sawyer and Hunter already knew how to ski and snorkel.

GREEN PAYS OFF

These small changes save the Lachances money and energy:

Buy annual share in a local organic farm: Pay only $16.25 each week for produce.

Purchase a Prius: It saves about 400 gallons of gas (approximately $1,400) annually.

Insulate attic floor: It saves 156 gallons of oil — and $546 — over one winter.

"If we don't understand how to treat the planet right, how can we expect to treat each other right?"

Damali Ayo, 36, CEO, CROW Clothing; Portland, OR

Actually, it was online-dating disasters that got her started: the guy who was writing a novel from the point of view of a 9-foot owl; the guy who said he wanted her to meet his mom, then dumped her two days later by text message; the guy who showed up for their second date carrying a Mensa magazine, presumably so she would appreciate his brilliance.

Damali, however, appreciated something else: She was wasting countless hours cruising dating sites and flirting via email. Why not put her energy into something more productive? She decided to "eco-fit" her home.

To go from chat rooms to compost piles may sound like a crazy leap, but it makes sense if you know two things about Damali. First, she's always had an activist streak. In 2005, she wrote a funny, biting book on race relations, How to Rent a Negro, and traveled the country conducting antiracism workshops. She sees a strong link between racial justice and the environment. "If we don't understand how to treat the planet right, how can we expect to treat each other right?" she says.

Second, Damali had just bought an 800-square-foot century-old house. The size forced her to shed a lot of stuff, and for all its vintage charm, the place needed a ton of work. "The opportunity to do it all green was right there in front of me," she says.

Damali started with projects that couldn't wait. She sewed kitchen curtains with cotton instead of polyester fabric. She installed CFLs and hated their bluish-white glare so much that she ended up really cutting back on electricity by turning them on only when truly necessary. When she had to replace the rotting bathroom floor, she chose cork.

"It's a lot of fun to redecorate a house — everybody loves that," she says. "But doing it in a way that's healthy for the planet, that's healthy for me, and that's just the right thing to do — I really had a blast."

Not that she enjoyed every moment. Damali eagerly ripped out the ugly nylon carpet in the living room only to discover foam padding plus three layers of vinyl flooring underneath. Determined to avoid chemicals, she used hot water and soy gel to strip the vinyl, and it was a mess. "I was down on my hands and knees, covered in wet glue," Damali says. She'd planned to attack the old carpet in her office next. Instead, she tossed a bamboo area rug on top.

Outside, Damali went wild. She tore out the grass and planted lettuce, beans, strawberries, fruit trees, and culinary and medicinal herbs. This was harder — literally — than it sounds, because everywhere she dug she hit rocks. It drove her crazy — until she got the idea of using them to build a patio.

The more she did, the more ambitious Damali became. She became obsessed with rain. Portland is wet, so it seemed ridiculously wasteful to run a garden hose in the summer. Instead of searching the Web for dates, she hunted for plumbing advice and learned how to build a piping system to funnel rainwater from her gutters into her garden. She also bought $5 rain barrels at a yard sale. Nothing seemed simpler than letting them fill and then scooping water out by the bucket — except that mosquitoes craved the water as much as her plants did. Damali had to crawl inside the barrels, scrub out mosquito eggs, and install spigots and drains.

The job was total muck, but amazingly gratifying, especially when two male neighbors ambled over to admire her work. "I don't have a man around the house to do this stuff," she says, "so accomplishing it on my own really means a lot."

Rain barrels notwithstanding, there are some places even Damali won't go in the name of green. "It took me a year and a half to switch to recycled toilet paper," she says. "Why can't they make it soft?" She keeps her winter thermostat set defiantly at 72 degrees. "I'm cold. I'm like a reptile," she says. "Sixty degrees just isn't going to happen." And Damali can't give up her favorite guilty pleasure: "I'm a total NASCAR freak."

But other changes have happened that Damali didn't anticipate. She stepped on the green path — and it led to a new career. Last fall, pretty much on impulse, she decided to create an organic-clothing company. In May, she launched CROW Clothing, a line of soft, elegantly casual clothing for women and men, made from natural fibers. And that accomplishment brought her full circle — she now appreciates Mensa Man and Owl Dude in a way she couldn't when she dated them. "I wouldn't say relationships consume me, but they distract me, for sure," she says. "Not having that distraction means my generosity and energy go to my home and this business. I'm so grateful that all those guys were useless."

GREEN PAYS OFF

These small changes save Damali money and energy:

Grow a vegetable garden: It saves $300 a month on summertime groceries.

Grow an herb garden: This saves $9 per box for feverfew tea, because now she grows the herb.

Install a rain-water-collection system and soaker hoses: That cuts summertime water consumption in half, plus earns a 20 percent water-bill discount year-round for the eco-friendly practice.